


only a protagonist can lead a plot from prison

by suitablyskippy



Category: Gintama
Genre: Careless & Carefree Brutality, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Prison, Rise To (Even More) Power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-06-05 12:36:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6704776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The situation is very simple. The Amanto military want Tae dead, and the Shinsengumi don’t; they want her in prison instead, but Tae wishes to be neither dead nor in prison, and therefore neither of those things are going to happen.</p><p>“That’s not how it works, Otae-san,” says Hijikata. His expression is growing increasingly pained. It’s still nowhere near pained enough to satisfy Tae. “Being arrested isn’t optional. You can’t just say you don’t want to be arrested. If you’re arrested, you’re arrested. That’s how it works.”</p><p>“Perhaps for other people,” says Tae politely.</p><p>(For the first time in her life, Tae’s tendency to commit brutal assault on strangers has landed her in trouble. It's clear to the Yorozuya that something must be very wrong in Edo.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

That night’s customer clears his throat, shuffles even nearer on the bench, and slides his hairy seven-fingered hand over Tae’s knee. 

Tae punches him in the underside of the jaw so hard that he goes flying. His skull crashes through the timbered ceiling above her booth. Wood splinters. Debris rains down. His body crashes back down and hits the table: beneath his weight one leg of the table shatters, their glasses shatter, two empty bottles of Dom Perignon shatter and another, half-full, erupts in a glittering diamond spray of glass shards and golden fizz. 

Tae brushes dust from her kimono and stands, surveying the man’s body sprawled across her cracked and slanting table. Already it’s just another tedious Wednesday night; the only point of interest here is the matter of where about his person he’s most likely to have secreted his wallet, and of how much, exactly, she might expect to—

“Get down!”

“Down, get _down_ —”

“Hands in the air! Now! _Now_ —!”

An eruption of violent noise, a flurry of violent movement – a stream of blinding red light, as a laser blast hits the wall where Tae’s head had been only an instant before with a hiss of heat and sudden stink of scorching wood. Bursting up from all around the club are men as hairy as her unconscious customer, in oddly streamlined all-in-one suits of an unflattering lime-green. They’re shoving the girls aside, shoving other customers aside; they’re vaulting up onto the booth seats for a better view and, Tae presumes, a heightened sense of drama. 

All of them hold unfamiliar gun-like weapons in hands that look, on cursory inspection, as though they have too many fingers. All of these weapons are trained on Tae. 

“Hands up,” says one of them. He’s hairier than the others. If Amanto military works the same way as Earth Shinsengumi, perhaps that makes him the default leader. 

He jerks the barrel of his gun, and Tae puts her hands up. 

Or – strictly speaking: she puts her fists up. Eleven of them, all armed, against one of her – it’s hardly worth her time, but at least that’ll be eleven more wallets she can pick through in the aftermath, assuming these Amanto men even carry wallets in those tightly vacuum-packed looking outfits of theirs. She shifts her stance and prepares for the attack. 

In all the screaming – cabaret girls, customers, assorted Kabukichou partiers in the street outside who have overheard the chaos and never need a reason to join in merrily with unattributed screaming – and in all the noise, the explosive entrance of the newest arrivals goes entirely unnoticed until they join in the screaming too. 

“This is the Shinsengumi! Weapons down!” Hijikata skids to a halt at the top of the entrance stairs, his sword drawn, and an equally melodramatic troop of armed Shinsengumi bursts in behind him. “Weapons _down_ , I said! Everything is under control!” 

His men swarm out from behind him across the floor of the club, booth to booth, engaging the owners of the laser guns in hurried conversation. Slowly, the barrels of their weapons begin to lower; Hijikata sheathes his sword and descends to the main floor of the club as well, and black uniforms swarm together with lime-green for a discussion so heated it crosses over, very soon, from disagreement into ferocious argument. 

Tae’s interest wanes the more likely it begins to seem that no one is going to engage her in open combat. She sweeps aside some shattered glass with the edge of her sandal; she nudges the still-unconscious body of her customer. There’s a wallet-looking shape bulging out near the armpit of his yukata. If she just—

But Hijikata is there, with the hairiest of the men in green at his side. Tae puts the matter of the wallet aside for now, and says politely, “Good evening, Hijikata-san.”

“Ah – you too,” says Hijikata. He looks stricken by some agonising discomfort: irritable bowels, perhaps, or a gastric ulcer. He clears his throat, then clears it again. “Look, Otae-san, this is – I, ah. I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it. You’re—”

“—sentenced to death,” bursts out the man in green. The bushy fronds atop his domed head are quivering in outrage. “Your execution will be carried out by the highest ranking member of the Royal Amagaeru Divisions currently Earth-side at this moment, which is to say the Reverent Commander of the Third Division, which is to say me, and it will be carried out at the first _instant_ of tomorrow’s sunrise—”

“It won’t,” says Hijikata. “There’s no execution happening, Reverent Commander. That’s not how we do things on Earth. But... Well, the thing is—” Whether he realises it or not, he’s leaning as far away from Tae as he can without actually losing his balance. She folds her hands in front of her and listens with interest. “The thing is, Otae-san: you’re under arrest.”

“Oh, I don’t think I am,” says Tae. 

“You are,” says Hijikata. 

“Oh, but I’m not,” says Tae politely. “Unless the Shinsengumi prefers to arrest vulnerable cabaret girls for bravely defending themselves against degenerate old men who breathe through their mouths and fondle the legs of young women, rather than arresting the degenerate old men themselves – why, Hijikata-san, unless that’s the case, then I rather think _I’m_ the victim here. And if that _is_ the case,” as her voice sweetens, “then what are you Shinsengumi good for, anyway? What good are you doing for Edo? Wouldn’t you be of more service to the city dead and stuffed and rolled over on your sides as limited-edition novelty draught excluders?”

Hijikata’s expression is growing increasingly pained. It’s still nowhere near pained enough to satisfy Tae. “Look, Otae-san,” he begins – then stops, and looks shiftily around, and resumes in a much lower voice, “It’s a damned mess of a situation you’ve walked into here, if you’ll just hear me out – the Amagaeru are in town as special guests of the Shogun, and that’s their most senior diplomatic envoy you just knocked cold. So – think of it as a token gesture. They want your execution. We don’t, but unless we pacify them they’re not going to stop pushing for it; so we put you in prison while we deal with them, and that way you’re safe, and the Amagaeru see us taking action. And—”

“This is the Shinsengumi!” bellows Kondou, skidding to a halt in the same place Hijikata had skidded to his own halt. He draws his sword with an even more impressive flourish. “Everyone remain calm! The situation’s under control!”

“Hijikata-san did that bit already, Kondou-san,” says Yamazaki, in an undertone that carries across the sudden hush of the club. 

Kondou straightens up and sheathes his sword just as impressively as he had drawn it: which is to say not impressively at all. “Excellent,” he declares. “Then we can get straight to work, can’t we? Where’s the trouble?”

Okita has wandered up beside him, hands in pockets as he surveys the club. His gaze falls on Hijikata, and Tae beside him, and his dead stare brightens up with the same vibrant, youthful joy with which a dead fish would brighten up if a small torch was forcibly shoved down inside its lifeless gullet and flicked on. “Well, would you look who it is, Kondou-san? Maa, what a mess, _what_ a mess...”

It takes Kondou a moment, peering out across the atmospheric glitter and gloom of the club. But then he sees her – sees Hijikata, sees the Reverent Commander of the Third Division – and his expression falls as hard and fast as though Tae had kicked his body from a clifftop. 

 

+++

 

Once it becomes clear that the Shinsengumi won’t be vacating the premises any time soon, Tae’s manager reluctantly sends the other girls home. The last of the customers fled long ago – the conscious ones, at least – and now in the club there’s only Tae, the Shinsengumi, the lime-green uniforms of the Third Division, an unconscious Amanto diplomat, and the manager of Snack Smile skulking unhappily by the door to his office. 

The situation is very simple. The Amagaeru want Tae dead, and the Shinsengumi don’t; they want her in prison instead, but Tae wishes to be neither dead nor in prison, and therefore neither of those things are going to happen. 

“That’s not how it works, Otae-san,” says Hijikata, for the hundredth time. His expression has grown even more long-sufferingly pained. It’s still not pained enough for Tae’s liking. “Being arrested isn’t optional. You can’t just say you don’t want to be arrested. If you’re arrested, you’re arrested. That’s how it works.”

“But I’m not arrested,” says Tae, also for the hundredth time. Sitting in the middle of them all, she folds her hands neatly in her lap. “Honestly, Hijikata-san, have you listened to me at all? I’ve already told you this. If I was under arrest, I’d be in handcuffs.”

“You _were_ in handcuffs,” says Kondou. His head is in his hands, his voice is brokenly low. 

“I was,” concedes Tae, “but now I’m not. Because I’m not under arrest.”

“Because you snapped them in half,” says Okita, “and incidentally, Otae-san, please don’t think my admiration for that level of brutality will prevent me sending you a bill for the replacements.”

“I say we don’t wait for morning,” says one of the members of the Third Division, and shakes a bristly fist. “I say you do it now, Reverent Commander! Right now! Out with her guts and off with her head, _that’ll_ teach her not to do it again! _That’ll_ show her not to—”

Still sprawled across the broken table, the diplomatic envoy lets out a painful groan. 

A sudden silence falls – expectant, anticipatory – but nothing else: unconsciousness still reigns. Tae nods in satisfaction. Barely an hour since she punched him; of course he’s not recovered yet. 

There’s a commotion at the doors, where most of the Shinsengumi now stand guard. A voice rises above it: “Oi, oi, I’m not here for trouble—” 

“ _I_ am—”

“—but what does a man have to do to get a drink round here?” demands Gintoki, over the sound of distantly splintering wood. 

“Yeah,” demands Kagura, over the sound of distantly colliding skulls, “how much Shinsengumi butt does a girl have to kick to get a drink round here?”

“ _Ane-ue_!” cries Shinpachi, and breaks free from the tussle to sprint across the club. He vaults over a table and keeps going; only an instant away do the Third Division seem to realise that he doesn’t plan on stopping, and hurriedly they make way just in time for him to burst through their ranks and launch himself at Tae. “We heard, ane-ue – Otose-san told us as soon as she heard, and she heard as soon as it happened – about the, the—”

“Misunderstanding?” offers Tae. She takes his hand gently in her own and pats it soothingly as he gasps for breath. “There’s no need to worry, Shin-chan; that nice Gorilla-san has promised to get it all sorted out, and I’ll be receiving a hundred thousand yen in compensation for the inconvenience just as soon as the banks open tomorrow morning.”

Hijikata sinks further into his seat. “No one promised any of that, Otae-san.”

“You’re quite right,” says Tae, “it was two hundred thousand yen, wasn’t it? Such a silly mistake for me to make.”

Shinpachi stares at her, his eyes huge and frantic with worry behind his glasses. “Ane-ue, I think you – I don’t know if you know about the Amagaeru, but they’re,” his voice drops, desperately anxious, and for the first time tonight a jolt of real concern passes down the length of Tae’s spine, “they’re serious, ane-ue. They run the public transport industry, they _are_ the public transport industry – they control half the shuttle routes in this solar system and more like seventy percent outside of it – they’re important, ane-ue, they can get what they want. They can make Earth give them what they want. They—”

“Breathe, Shin-chan,” says Tae. Her concern is already pushed aside; she’s on her feet, rubbing his back. “Breathe, come on—”

Shinpachi squeezes his eyes shut tight and breathes. Kagura somersaults across three booths in one go and aims her crash-landing at Okita, who spins and deflects her, which leaves his ribs open to the heel of her foot, and furniture begins to detonate around them as Gintoki wanders over, Yamazaki trailing despondently at his heels. “We tried to hold them back, Kondou-san, really, but—”

“But there’s no holding back the Yorozuya,” says Kondou. “It’s all right, Yamazaki.” He takes a moment to compose himself, and then he gets to his feet. “Regarding the current situation—”

“Go along with them,” says Shinpachi, in a voice still too desperately low for anyone but Tae to hear. “Please, ane-ue – I know it’s stupid and unfair and – and everything, it _is_ , but – please. _Please_.”

Raised voices: the opposing forces of Gintoki and Hijikata’s testosterone supplies have collided. Tae ignores them. “Shin-chan...” 

“It won’t be for long, and then afterwards you can beat up Kondou-san and the others all you want – well,” he amends hastily, “maybe not _all_ you want; it wouldn’t be much good if you just went straight back to prison... But please, ane-ue: go along with them.” He hesitates. It’s a fragile, precarious hesitation. It drops Tae’s heart into a vice. “They could hurt you,” says Shinpachi at last. The vice slams closed. “I don’t want you to be hurt. So – please.”

His hand is clammy in hers. Tae looks at him a moment longer, at the fingerprint smudge on his left lens – yet more evidence of how frantic he’s been, that he’s let it stay there unpolished for so long – and then she drops his hand and turns away. “Hijikata-san? If you could stop tugging on Gin-san’s curly little pigtails for a moment, I’m sure we’d all appreciate it. It’s late, after all, and Kagura-chan’s a growing girl; she needs her sleep.”

She holds out her wrists. 

Hijikata lets go of Gintoki’s yukata and shares a glance with Kondou, who passes it on to Okita, who passes it on, presumably, to the very clear view he currently has up Kagura’s nostrils, and then passes it back to Hijikata. No one moves. 

“Well?” says Tae impatiently. She pushes back the sleeves of her kimono and holds her wrists out again. “Won’t you hurry up and arrest me? I could assault another of those hairy green snot-suits over there, if that would help to speed things along—”

“ _Ane-ue_!” 

“Well,” says Kondou, and hesitates as though he’d very much like someone else to step in and reassuringly tell him not to worry, everything will be fine, and they’d be more than happy to handle this particular responsibility on his behalf – but no one does. He unhooks a pair of handcuffs from his belt and gazes down at them in misery. “Well – all right. All right, then. We’ll, ah – Shimura Tae, you’re under arrest. For—”

“Violent abuse,” says the Reverent Commander at once, whose expression is twisted into an intent and ugly scowl, “violent assault, violent harassment, abusive violence, abusive assault, abusive harassment, assaulting violence, assaulting abuse—” but he cuts off with a cry. The reason isn’t clear, but Okita is at his side; generally, that’s reason enough. 

The handcuffs aren’t cold: they’ve been soaking up the warmth of Kondou’s leg all night. Tae would like to tell herself that that’s the single most distasteful part of the whole situation, but it wouldn’t be true. At her side Shinpachi is standing as resolutely, determinedly straight as he only ever does when he’s trying very hard not to crumple down and cry. Kagura is watching from the back of the booth, restlessly kneading the loose sleeve of Gintoki’s yukata, her eyes huge and her mouth scrunched small with dismay; and Gintoki is watching too, his expression faraway, looking at the cuffs she could break in a heartbeat if she wanted to. 

There’s a small frown between his eyebrows. It’s the closest Tae’s seen his usual blandness come to an expression of open worry since Sadaharu cocked his leg outside a newspaper stand some few months ago and turned the entire display of that week’s Shounen Jump to sodden, yellowy mush. 

For only the second time that evening, the faintest trace of real concern slides icily down her spine. 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

The door slams closed with a clang that echoes and echoes in the long dark stone hall. 

The cell is bare: ten paces by ten paces, as Tae counts it out. Cold stone walls rise up on three sides. The fourth is bars from floor to ceiling, and in the gloom across the dark hall Tae can just make out another barred wall to match her own. Beyond it there’s a silhouette. A woman watching her, perhaps. A woman with nothing better to do than skulk in the dark in the middle of the night, staring across the hall and watching her. 

Against the back wall is a frayed tatami and a heap of crumpled sheets. Tae shakes them out, wrinkling her nose against the cloud of dust that billows up, and resigns herself to sleep. 

 

+++

 

The clamour and bellowing and thunderous chaos that wakes her the next morning is little different from the clamour and bellowing and thunderous chaos that generally wakes her whenever Kagura and Sadaharu stay the night. Guards are pacing the hall, slamming sticks against the bars with the echoing ring of steel on steel; women’s voices are yelling; an alarm is sounding somewhere with a shrill and swooping wail, and the gist of it all seems to be breakfast. 

It’s served in a long grey-walled room with two small, grilled windows. Beyond the windows is a smeary view of a grey exercise yard, and obscuring anything further than that is a splat of something brown crusted against the glass. Far up, beneath the high grey ceiling, a criss-crossing network of gantries rattles with the footfall of patrolling guards. The belligerent ruckus of conversation swells and breaks and swells again around the room. 

Breakfast itself is a bowl of something sludgy and white, or at least closer to white than any other recognisable colour on the spectrum. It’s served on a tray with a paper cup of water and a flimsy plastic spoon, all of which are sticky to the touch with the memories of other sludge before it. 

Settled in comfortably with her new companions, Tae subjects her meal to a sorrowful inspection. “I don’t suppose political hunger strike is still fashionable, is it? Oh, girls, you don’t need to answer that – I already know that would be much too much to hope for, just as I already know obtaining a meal that couldn’t have plausibly been squeezed from the warden’s small intestine is an equally impossible dream...” 

“Who the hell are you?” says the companion to her left. 

Amiably, Tae asks, “Don’t you think that’s a rather personal question?” 

A low hum of dissatisfied muttering breaks out among her companions. Her companions had been seated together in one big noisy cluster at the cafeteria table closest to the serving hatch, and Tae had made them her companions with a polite _excuse me_ and an equally polite shove that violently shunted half of them along their bench, just far enough for her to take a seat in the very middle of the group. The muttering of her companions is already turning darker, and growing louder. Tae takes a sip of water and wrinkles her nose at the chemical taste. 

“She’s gotta be the new one,” says another of her companions. “Kinu heard someone arriving last night, she said—”

“Thinking she can just sit with _us_ —!”

“Who the hell is she? Lady, you wanna tell us who the hell you—”

“I don’t care who she is,” says another of her companions, in a tone so meaningful that the rest of the table falls into respectful silence. “I care who the hell she _thinks_ she is.” 

“Oh, my,” says Tae obligingly. She holds her plastic spoon up between thumb and forefinger and subjects it to critical inspection. “This thing is really just insult to injury, isn’t it?”

“It’s for safety,” says the same of her companions. “Plastic for safety. Because round here, we can get... _dangerous_.” 

Tae jabs the spoon experimentally into her bowl of sludge. It stands there on its own, upright, unmoving. 

Her companion plants her elbows on the table and does something that, even beneath the sleeves of her grey prison pyjamas, manages to make her biceps ripple. “Since you’re new,” she says, voice low and ominous, “there’s some things you oughta know about this place. Some things you oughta know about how we work, round here. How we get along with each other. How we... _don’t_ get along with each other. And first things first, lady, you need to learn _respect_ —”

Tae takes the spoon from her bowl of sludge and jabs it somewhere else. 

By the time the guards have wrestled the cafeteria back into a semblance of order and the majority of the violence has been quelled with nightsticks and handcuffs and tactical headlocks and the screams have mostly stopped – only their echoes left, bouncing around the cold high walls – Tae has placidly finished her revolting breakfast. It tasted no better for the company she kept during it, but she always likes to get to know the locals while she’s travelling in an unfamiliar place. There’s really no telling what kind of insider information you can pick up, even after only a little socialising: which pristine white beaches are kept cleanest, which swaggering ringleaders are least capable of defending themselves in situations of sudden, violent combat, which traditional little restaurants offer the greatest value for money, which top dogs are nothing but whimpering bitches, which mountain roads are least likely to crumble beneath an unexpected summertime avalanche and could safely hold a roaring hired motorbike complete with gleaming cherry-red sidecar for Shinpachi...

A few of her companions are slumped beside her, fallen forwards across their table, drifting in and out of consciousness, having inhaled a little too much of the sludge introduced by force to their mouths and noses – of the sludge introduced, specifically, by Tae’s force. 

Starting a riot is like cooking a stew, really; all you have to do is strike a light beneath it, and after that it just keeps itself bubbling. 

 

+++

 

Hours pass alone in her cell. The woman in the cell directly opposite spends almost all those hours pacing back and forth behind her bars. Sometimes she points two fingers towards her eyes, and then points those two fingers across at Tae. Tae offers a smile, one of her sweeter ones, but the woman doesn’t smile back and Tae doesn’t offer again. 

At length, a sound catches her attention. She sits up on her tatami and listens for it: an offbeat patting sound, so quiet it’s almost lost under the endless braying chaos of the hall. 

“ _Oi_ – lady, you there? Hey—”

There’s a hand flapping at the very edge of her cell, where the wall of bars meets the right-side wall of stone. There’s a piece of paper in the hand, too. 

“Thank you,” says Tae politely, taking the message. She sits down against the wall to read it, and her neighbour’s hand disappears. 

_REMEMBER YOSHIKO U KABUKI BITCH_ , says the message. Tae doesn’t remember Yoshiko. She crumples the paper and tosses it aside. 

“Well?” comes her neighbour’s voice again, after a moment. 

“Well what?”

“You got a reply?” she says impatiently. “Pass it back this way, I’ll send it on.”

“Oh, it was just junk mail,” says Tae, “they must have my name on a mailing list somewhere, I suppose. Buy this dress, buy that pizza, adopt this puppy, sponsor that dick enlargement... But thank you all the same; you’re very kind to offer.” 

“Uh – I’m pretty sure that wasn’t junk mail, lady.”

“You are?” says Tae, in mild astonishment. “But however would you know that? Unless you read my post, of course – but no, no – I’m sorry to even suggest it. I’m quite sure you wouldn’t. I already feel as though we’re rather good friends, you see, and I know no friend of mine would stoop as low as that.” 

Her neighbour hesitates. “No, I – yeah, I wouldn’t. I would never. Friends, you say?”

Tae presses her hand bashfully to her cheek, despite the fact the full effect is naturally lost on her neighbour behind the wall; but it’s the principle of the thing, and Tae is nothing if not committed to her role. “Oh, I know it’s silly of me to move so quickly, but I just – I really feel as though we’ve made a connection. I really do. Is that silly of me? You can tell me if it is, I won’t be—”

“Oh, no,” her neighbour says hurriedly, “no, no, that ain’t silly. That’s – good. Friends. Yeah, we’re friends.” After a moment: “It’s pretty hard to make friends in here, usually. You know? I don’t remember the last time I had a friend.”

“That’s too bad,” says Tae sympathetically. “Tell me all about it, why don’t you? That’s what friends are for, after all: sharing troubles, and worries, and personal information, and all that sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” says her neighbour. “Yeah, that’s... That’s true, ain’t it? It’s been so long since I had a friend I nearly forgot about that. All right – I will, then.” She hesitates for a moment, then says, suddenly forceful: “You’re a nice girl, you know that?”

“Yes,” says Tae, who does. 

“You’re a good person,” insists her neighbour, which again Tae is entirely aware of, but which never hurts to hear reaffirmed by outside sources. “I dunno what you did, but you shouldn’t be in here. This ain’t a place for people with good hearts inside them.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” says Tae politely. “Come on, now – tell me what’s troubling you. I’ll just listen, and you can say what you like, and it’ll all be safe with me.”

“Well,” begins her neighbour, “it started back before I was arrested, I guess – maybe before that. Maybe back when I was at school. I mean, I never had much time at school, on account of my dad getting sick just after my grandma got hit by that bus and my mum won all that money on the lottery but gambled it away in just one week, and all my seven little sisters needed looking after, too—”

Tae gets soundlessly to her feet and goes back to her tatami. It’s been a long morning already. She deserves a nap, and so she takes one. 

When she wakes, the woman in the cell beside hers is still talking. Her quiet murmur has the slightly thickened quality that comes from the aftermath of tears, and Tae crouches down beside their adjoining wall again. 

“I understand,” she whispers, in a tone of deep compassion. Her voice aches with so much overwhelmingly sincere emotion that her heart almost does as well. “I understand completely, and you don’t have to say another word. You’ve been through so much, haven’t you? But it’s made you strong. I really believe that. I really believe you’ve grown into a better person.”

She slips her hand between the rightmost bar of her cell and the wall, and flattens it against the front of the wall that divides them. After a moment, another hand finds hers: clammy fingertips brush briefly across the back of her hand, and pat once, twice, before disappearing. 

“I got your back,” her neighbour whispers fiercely to her. “No matter what, all right? You can trust me. You’re a good person, and I got your back.”

“I knew I could count on you,” says Tae sombrely. “You’ll pass the word on, won’t you?”

“You bet I will,” says her neighbour, heartfelt. 

In the cold, empty chamber of her cell, Tae’s smile blossoms quite of its own accord. 

 

+++

 

Someone tries to start a fight on the way to lunch. Someone tries to start a fight during lunch, and after lunch, and quite possibly someone attempts to start a fight in the bare grey rec yard too, but the fight gets no further than the endlessly pacing woman in the cell across from Tae’s confronting her beneath the shadow of the high grey wall, beneath the slate-grey sky, a splintered length of plywood board in hand and a maddened frenzy in her eyes, shrieking: “Yoshiko! You Kabuki bitch, remember Yoshiko? You remember that night outside her club, you remember what you _did_ to—”

Tae still doesn’t remember Yoshiko, and nor does she care to. She doesn’t much care to be called a Kabuki bitch, either; and this she proceeds to explain, though guards burst onto the scene from the watchpoints around the yard while she’s still mid-explanation, and she’s returned to her cell before she can clear up the finer points: which is preferable, really, since the thin prison-issue uniforms do very little to keep out the chill of this late springtime cold snap. 

Distantly, an echo of a ghostly echo, the wail of a faraway ambulance drifts urgently ever nearer through the prison halls. 

 

+++

 

“All in all, we got to produce a thousand by the end of each hour. And there’s two hundred of us, so we got to do five each.”

The incessant clattering drone of the sewing machines clatters on; the long lines of tables judder beneath them, rattling hard against the floor. But the hum of dull conversation dies away. A furtive hush falls across the workroom, as though no one wants to admit they’re listening in. 

Tae’s endless gracious patience is starting to wear a little thin. She says, “Could you move your hand, please?”

The hand isn’t moved. The hand is planted flat on the top of Tae’s sewing machine, and the owner of the hand is looming above Tae with her dark hair tumbling down her back in hopelessly unbrushed tangles. Prison can do terrible things to a woman’s self-respect, clearly. 

“It _would_ be five each,” continues the woman, “if the maths was simple. But it’s not. For example: I prefer to do one per hour. That means you got to do nine per hour. And Kinu over here also prefers to do one per hour. That means you got to do thirteen per hour. And—”

Tae reaches up behind her, grabs, and pulls. Like a pebble in a slingshot, the amateur mathematician catapults across the table in a beautiful swooping arc. 

She’s on her feet before the dust has had a chance to settle; before the guards can rally into movement she vaults across to follow, over the row of startled inmates lined up at their sewing machines across from her, and she lands hard on the other side. Her victim has hit the stone floor flat on her front, skidded, and rolled halfway over. 

Tae rolls her the rest of the way over with the sole of one prison-issue sandal, plants a foot either side of her chest, and sits down – hard. 

“I understand the maths,” she says pleasantly, curling her fist into the collar of the woman’s grey prison pyjamas and yanking her head up. “The maths is _very_ simple. For example: I prefer to do none per hour. That means you do ten per hour.” 

A weak cough. A weak splatter of blood. A not-at-all weak collision of skull against stone. Tae switches hands so she can wipe the blood from her wrist, and yanks the woman’s head back up. “Another example: if you hit your head _this_ hard,” she explains, “you’re likely to need about five stitches. If you hit your head _this_ hard – you’re likely to need about twelve stitches. If you hit your head _this_ hard – you’re likely to need a coffin about five foot ten—”

But all around her the guards are pressing in, their shock shaken off, snorting and stamping like they’re ready for a fight. 

Tae doesn’t much feel like giving them one, though; and so she goes with dignified, elegant grace instead, condescending to stand, condescending to allow her hands to be cuffed behind her back, condescending to be led from the room – not hauled, as the guards would perhaps prefer it; she follows where she’s led with steps as dainty as any weekend afternoon’s sunny Kabukichou stroll. 

At the door, though, she looks back. 

Not a single sewing machine is whirring. Beyond the press of black-uniformed guards around her, every face in the room is turned to her, every stunned stare is fixed on her. 

Tae smiles. It’s not a very nice smile. The door of the workroom slams shut. 

A long dark echoing hall, another long dark echoing hall, yet another long dark echoing hall: she’s back in her cell. That door slams shut too. She rubs her freed wrists and considers the immediate future, and smiles as she does it. It’s really not a very nice smile at all. 

 

+++

 

No one is pacing in the cell across from hers the next morning. No one is in the cell at all. Tae sits alone at breakfast and works patiently at the slab of fibrous brown material provided as accompaniment for her paper cup of chemically-treated water, and allows the huddle of women at her back as much time as they need to work up the courage to approach her of their own accord. 

“Ah – ‘scuse me?” one of them says at last. There’s the sound of hurried throat-clearing. “’Scuse me – boss lady? I was wondering if – well, I happened to have this old bit of chocolate just, just lying about, as it were, in my cell, just lying there – and I was wondering if maybe you’d—”

“Why don’t you sit down?” says Tae invitingly, and pats the empty bench beside her. There’s a sudden burst of frantic nervous whispering. No one sits. “Come on, now – it’s silly to be standing when there’s plenty of space, after all. And,” slightly less inviting, slightly more menacing, “don’t you agree it’s just a _little_ rude for all of you to be lurking at my back like that? A girl could get the wrong idea.” 

In an instant the benches at her table are swarmed with women fighting to be seated. 

“This chocolate bar,” says the narrow-shouldered woman squashed in at Tae’s left, and slaps a mouldy-looking old chocolate bar down onto the table before her with a look of desperate appeal, “I just found it in my cell, like I said, just found it lying there – and I just thought, y’know, about who might – about someone what might like a chocolate bar, just as a gift—”

“My brother sends me commission once a month,” interrupts another woman, her dark hair cropped lopsidedly short, “five thousand yen – the first weekend of the month, every month, boss lady – just so’s you know if there’s anything you wanna buy, or you’re ever in need of a bit of cash—”

“You want extra sheets,” bursts in another woman, “then I got extra sheets, boss lady – you want another tatami, I got an extra tatami—”

“Twice-a-week phone privileges—” 

“ _Hundreds_ of batteries—”

“Girls,” says Tae, raising her hands, “girls, girls, girls. _Girls_.” The frantic babble comes to a halt. She shakes her head and laughs, a fondly indulgent chuckle. “Girls, please. You’re too good. Too kind. You’re too generous, but there’s no need for all this. The truth is, there’s only one thing I really want—”

“ _Anything_ , boss lady, anything at all—”

“—and that’s to transfer my work duties.” Tae props her chin on her fist and assumes a look of pensive contemplation. “I’d prefer to serve my time doing something worthwhile, you see, not stitching up the hems on knock-off yukata that even a blind alleycat would be too proud to piss on. I don’t suppose any of you work in the kitchens, do you?” 

Another brief burst of muttering as the women consult amongst themselves. “Hanako does,” says one of them at last, and Hanako lifts a hand. She’s a frail, spindly woman who’s pastier even than most of the rest of them, her hand quaking in the air for the few moments it’s feebly raised. “But that’s only because she has asthma. She can’t work in the sewing room cos of all the little bits of cloth, all the snippings and threads and that – they make her choke and pass out. Last time it happened she had to get taken to hospital and no one knew if she was even gonna _survive_ it, the way her face went so blue—”

“Deal,” says Tae. She holds out her hand. 

“Deal,” says Hanako. She takes Tae’s hand and clutches it weakly. 

“And that’s all I want,” concludes Tae. She sits back and looks around her table with an expression of warmest welcome: in prison, as elsewhere, as everywhere, she remains queen of all she surveys. “Although I will take the chocolate bar, and the extra sheets, and the phone privileges, and everything else you mentioned. And if there’s anyone in here with access to a television, a DVD player, and a season three boxset of _The Tenderest Hearts Blossom In February_ , I’ll have that as well. But nothing else. I’m not a demanding woman, and I like to live a frugal life. I’ll also have your bracelet – no, not yours, not that flimsy piece of crap – _yours_ ,” says Tae, and the silvery bangle is hurriedly unclasped and dropped into her waiting hand. “You’re too kind,” she says, closing it at her own wrist, “too kind, girls. You’re too good to me.”

“Anything you want,” she’s assured, over and over, as the gathering for breakfast begins to disperse, “whatever it is, boss lady. You just tell us.” 

Now as ever, Tae remains queen of all she surveys: but she’s not a cruel queen. She’s a queen who keeps the welfare of her citizens in mind at all times. She’s a queen who graciously permits the local peasantry to toil on her land so long as they donate their earnings directly to her, and pass on all gifts they receive directly to her, and burn a beloved sacrifice in her honour at least once a week; and in return Tae offers them her kind heart, her swift justice, and the incomparable privilege of her sweet and charming company. 

Really, when she puts it like that, it’s all perfectly clear: if anyone’s got the better end of the deal here, it’s certainly not Tae.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

Tae’s first shift in the kitchens passes without trouble. Chalked onto the menu for the upcoming dinnertime is plain brown rice; her polite suggestion that the inmates might prefer tamagoyaki instead is declined, and declined again and again and again until Tae can no longer hold back a trembling spill of shining, delicate tears. Hand pressed against her heart, she explains that the prison cooks are right to ignore her suggestions, of course, and she knows she shouldn’t be making them – for it’s not her place, and she respects the wisdom of their years – but her mother had always cooked tamagoyaki for her as a comfort food, before she died, back when Tae was only very, very young – _ever_ so young, explains Tae, as she brushes away just enough tears to be sure that plenty still remain, shining and crystalline, to glitter quite beautifully whenever her eyelashes flutter closed... And Tae had just been thinking, really, of all the women in this prison who must be missing their own mothers so very, very much – and thinking of how perhaps if she, Tae, could cook the food that her own mother had always cooked, to show Tae that she loved her – and if she could instil even a fraction of her own mother’s remembered love into the meal, then perhaps – oh, perhaps! – perhaps the women in the prison would feel it too: the faint warmth of their own mothers’ touch, the warmth of their own mothers’ love...

She takes a deep breath, and brushes away tears. Oh, but it’s a silly idea, of course, the silly notion of a silly little girl! And there’s no need for the cooks to be kind about it when they tell her so, there truly isn’t—

But Tae isn’t the only one crying by this point. Swept up in the emotional embrace of the prison cooks, she permits herself to be talked into wiping away her tears, permits her gratitude to overcome her, permits her bravest wobbly smile to be coaxed out like sunshine after rain. 

The first batch of tamagoyaki is cooling on the counter by the time Tae leaves, lined up neatly on prison-issue trays and glowing with a bright, summery shade of irradiated nuclear black. 

There’s a guard outside the kitchen to receive her. The handcuffs snap closed and ratchet tighter closed, and the guard says, “You’ve got visitors.” 

 

+++

 

“Ane-ue!” cries Shinpachi, and leaps to his feet. Then he sits back down again, just as suddenly, and stares at her through the smeared plastic divide between them as though he can hardly believe she's real. 

“Shin-chan!” says Tae, delighted. She takes the seat she’s shown to, handcuffs clattering, and props her elbows on the counter. There’s a smattering of holes drilled in the wall to speak through, and she leans in. “And Kagura-chan, Gin-san – are you well?”

“ _We’re_ fine, ane-ue, but we’re not the ones in prison.” Shinpachi’s trying very hard not to look at the handcuffs. He glances away; his gaze finds the armed and silent guard on his side of the divide instead, and travels helplessly back to Tae. “Are you – is everything, I mean – if there’s something we can do, if there’s—”

Tae touches her fingertips fondly to the plastic. “I’m all right, Shin-chan,” she says. “I’ll be fine. There’s no need to worry about me.”

With two inches of bulletproof plastic between them, Shinpachi touches his own fingertips to hers. He doesn’t cry, and Tae doesn’t think he’s going to; his expression is resolute, and he meets her eyes firmly. “Well, we wanted to keep you up-to-date on how it’s going out here,” he says. “There’s a lot happening, and Gin-san said—”

“Boss lady!” A woman’s hand on her shoulder; she ducks, and quickly whispers in Tae’s ear, “Chiyo says there’s something going down in the rec hour tonight – something big, she says. Says there’s gonna be a few of them. You want us to bring weapons?”

“No more than you’d usually carry,” says Tae, in an undertone to match the woman’s own. “Unless you hear the east wing girls are likely to be there. In that case, bring everything you have.” 

“Got it, boss lady. I’ll pass it on,” she adds, and straightens up, and carries on her way to another visiting booth some few places down. 

“Uh – ane-ue?” says Shinpachi. “Ane-ue, what was that? What did I just hear?”

“What was what, Shin-chan?” says Tae, with a look of polite bemusement. “Now, where were we? Did Gin-san have something to tell me?”

“You just ordered a fight,” says Shinpachi. He does so in the stunned, vacant manner of the recently concussed. “A prison fight. A prison fight with weapons. Didn’t you, ane-ue? Isn’t that what I heard? Gin-san, did you hear that?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” says Gintoki, “and it’s probably best if you didn’t either, Patsuan. Listen, Otae-san, we’ve been digging into it on this end, and it’s not getting any more straightforward; the whole thing’s looking about as sticky as the spare socks of an idol-loving bespectacled teenage boy, if you ask me—”

Shinpachi jolts from his stupor instantly. “ _Gin-san_! Why was that comparison so specific!”

Another hand on Tae’s shoulder, another whisper in her ear. “Boss lady, Karu said Shime was a loser – she said she probably never did anything worse than breaking and entering, and called her sandals ugly. Should we retaliate?”

“Without pity or hesitation,” says Tae at once, her voice lowered. “Speak to Tatsu. She’s been keeping lead piping under her tatami since she last worked a factory shift. Report back to me by the rec hour.” The hand leaves her shoulder, the whisper is gone. Tae’s voice sweetens once again. “I’m sorry, Gin-san, what—”

“Oi! You, get back here – the boss lady’s not done yet!” Kagura slams her fist on the countertop, on her feet and glowering ferociously into Tae’s side of the divide. The woman hesitates, and looks to Tae – who nods gravely – and the woman returns. “Lead piping’s a good start,” says Kagura, her voice conspiratorially lowered and theatrically accented, “but you really wanna rough a sucker up, you don’t wanna start with the piping first _off_ , you dig, uh-huh? You wanna build up to it, you hear me?” She slams a fist against the countertop again and bellows: “ _You hear me_?”

“I hear you! I hear you!” 

“That’s what I thought,” says Kagura, and squints out into the long-lost distance with all the violent gravitas of a seventy-year-old yakuza boss. “Start from that sucker’s toes, uh-huh. Start from the toes and work up. Work up _real_ good. Work all the way up to—”

Gintoki wrestles her down from the countertop and fights her back into her seat. “Normally I’d let you have your fun, Kagura-chan, but we’ve only got an hour here and we can’t waste all of that on you assaulting prisoners by proxy. The Amagaeru haven’t calmed down yet, Otae-san, and it doesn’t seem a whole lot like they’re planning to—”

“Is no one else worried about the fact ane-ue just ordered a prison beating?” Shinpachi wonders aloud. 

“Not on her own,” objects Kagura. “I helped.”

“You were _very_ helpful, Kagura-chan,” Tae tells her warmly, and Kagura lights up with a delighted grin as dazzlingly bright as a floodlight. 

“So you admit it! You just admitted it! Ane-ue, I heard you!”

“—though mostly they’re pissed at the Shinsengumi’s pet gorilla,” Gintoki presses on, getting louder by the moment, “since they wanted their own men added into all future Shinsengumi patrols, just in case Edo’s hiding away any other cabaret girls of mass destruction, and though Gorilla-san turned them down—” 

“— _I_ think you should smoke them out,” Kagura’s saying, confidentially, “light your bed on fire, uh-huh, and smoke them out so there’s only one exit, and wait for the stampede—”

“—they’re _not taking it lightly_ , Otae-san,” says Gintoki, almost yelling now, “and now the way it’s going, Otae-san, it looks like they’ll be taking it all the way up to the Shogun. Otae-san. Are you listening, Otae-san? Did you hear a word of that, Otae-san?” 

“I see,” Tae says to Kagura, listening intently, “yes, I see – and then in all the confusion no one knows _who_ severed whose ponytail—”

“ _Otae-san_!” – and, at the same time, in the same half-mad strangled yell: “ _Ane-ue_!” 

“I heard you!” says Tae, “I heard you, Gin-san! But it all seems such a long way away now,” she says, and lets out a picturesque sigh. “Another lifetime, almost. I can hardly remember what it’s like to see the sun.”

Shinpachi simmers down a little, and looks at her in concern. “Ane-ue, are you sure you’re all right?” 

Her expression unclouds, and she smiles at him again. It’s a real smile, and a kind smile; it’s not one of her most commonly used smiles, but it’s the one that comes to her easiest, and always has done. “I promise, Shin-chan. There’s no need to worry about me; that’s what I told you, and I meant it. It’s just that all the cares of everyday life start to seem so petty once you’ve served hard time.”

“She’s a real boss lady now,” Kagura tells him, but neither she nor Shinpachi seem much cheered by the thought; and after a moment Kagura splats her own hand flat against the divide as well. “Don’t get caught for anything you couldn’t have got someone else to do for you instead, big sis.” Her expression is sombre. 

“I promise I won’t, Kagura-chan.” 

“And screw the pigs,” adds Kagura, as an equally sombre afterthought. 

Tae flattens her own hand against hers, and vows, “I’ll do my best, Kagura-chan.”

 

+++

 

No one is pacing in the cell across from hers the next morning. The cell isn’t empty today, though: there’s someone there, sitting quiet and still against the back wall. Someone other than the previous occupant – someone smaller, and slighter, with a regulation grey prison-issue eyepatch. 

Tae stares for a moment, and then she rubs her eyes and stares again. The view doesn’t change. “Kyuu-chan!” 

Kyuubei’s eye snaps open – then wider, startled, and in an instant both of them have leapt to their feet and raced to the front of their cells, seizing the bars as they stare across the hall between them. “Tae-chan!”

“What in the world are you doing here, Kyuu-chan?” says Tae, trying to keep the delight from her voice without much success. “You didn’t – oh, Kyuu-chan, you didn’t kill that dirty little Amanto man who caused me all this trouble to start with, did you? It’s only going to make things worse if you did, though I still can’t say I’d mind too much—”

“I didn’t kill any men, Tae-chan,” Kyuubei assures her, “but if you want me to, just tell me. I’ll do it. I’ll kill any men you want.” 

The alarm for breakfast shrills out. The hammer of sticks on cell-front bars begins to echo, the clamour of doors unlocking and prisoners flocking free as they’re herded towards the canteen. Tae fights her way across the crowd and seizes Kyuubei by the elbow, and keeps both of them together as the swarm of inmates washes rapidly on around them. “Then what did you _do_ , Kyuu-chan?” she says, her whisper urgently low enough that it’s very nearly lost to the chaos. “If you didn’t kill him, what on earth are you doing here?”

Kyuubei’s gaze drifts seriously, thoughtfully away towards the furthest wall. “I was... apprehended in the act. Red-handed, Hijikata said. I mean in the act of mugging Tojo. At swordpoint. Outside the Shinsengumi headquarters, yesterday afternoon.”

It takes Tae a moment to find her voice. “You mugged _Tojo-san_? But... Kyuu-chan,” she says, bewilderment mixing with her utter sympathy, “whatever did he have that you might want? Does he carry anything on him but dirty magazines and mirrors on long stems for up-skirt peeking and long-range flash lenses? You’d be better off mugging Gin-san, for all the profit you’re likely to make off a good-for-nothing like Tojo-san; at least Gin-san might have a little ice cream tucked away somewhere, and if nothing else that’s good for raising your energy after the disappointment of his empty wallet.”

“You’re right, Tae-chan. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Next time I’ll ask Gintoki if I can mug him first. And only if he says no will I turn to Tojo.”

“Even Hasegawa-san would be better than – wait,” says Tae, “Kyuu-chan, wait – do you mean that you asked Tojo-san for permission to mug him?”

“I didn’t ask him. I told him. He works for me. He has to follow my orders,” says Kyuubei, and hesitates, as though preparing for a death-bed confession so tremendously, earth-shakingly unexpected and illegal that its tremors will still be felt throughout the family even generations later. “I... heard you were in prison, Tae-chan. I couldn’t allow you to remain in prison alone.”

“That was very thoughtful of you, Kyuu-chan,” says Tae fondly – but already that’s as much sentiment as she has time to afford: the open double doors of the canteen are swiftly rising up ahead, and urgently she gestures after her, and shoulders them both aside from the surging rush of the crowd. “Listen – I have to tell you, and I’m sorry that I have to – but we can’t just walk in there as though we’re friends.” She clutches Kyuubei’s hands imploringly in her own, and presses on: “Things don’t work the same way in prison, you understand; and you’re only new here, so of course you couldn’t be expected to know that – but I’ve seen things in my time here that you’d never believe, Kyuu-chan.”

Kyuubei’s expression is tragic with compassion. “Tae-chan...” 

“I’ve seen the darkest heart of humanity, Kyuu-chan,” says Tae, her composure slipping only for a moment as her passion bursts through. “People who’ve never served hard time will never understand what it’s like. I’ve experienced more than any man ever could in a lifetime on the battlefield, and though it’s only been three days, in a way it’s _been_ a lifetime on the battlefield – that’s what it’s like in prison, Kyuu-chan, and I’ve fought many long and bloody battles to earn my place.”

Too overcome to speak, Kyuubei says nothing, but gazes up at Tae with a look of raw sympathy. 

Tae, too, is nearly too overcome to speak – but she forces down the sentiment and says, as studiedly light as she can, “And I can tell you, Kyuu-chan: it’s a dog-eat-dog world in here. If we’re to associate, the women will want to see you prove you’re worth it.”

Kyuubei doesn’t hesitate. “Then I must prove that I’m a dog, and not just kibble. I understand, Tae-chan.”

“I knew you would,” says Tae, unspeakably relieved. 

 

+++

 

“Boss lady!”

“Boss lady, over here!”

“We saved you a seat, boss lady!”

“We saved you a seat first, boss lady, they just copied us—”

“We saved you a seat _and_ an extra cup of water, boss lady, and Yasu never washes her shirts properly so you don’t wanna sit by her stinky armpits anyway—”

Tae lifts her hands and, after a moment, the explosion of noise fades away to a heated susurrus instead. “Girls, girls,” she says, and shakes her head indulgently. “There’s no need to fight, now, is there? I’ll sit with whoever brought a cushion for me to sit on; those benches are ever so hard, and I’m not interested in sitting with anyone who doesn’t have the basic consideration to deal with that for me.”

The hush holds for a moment – and then on the far side of the room there’s a joyous cry, and one long table erupts in cheering as a thin grey cushion is waved above the heads of its occupants. Like a flower that turns towards the sun, Tae’s kind heart and good favour turn towards that table for the day; her feet turn towards that table too, and she takes her tray of lumpish beige to join it. 

Several minutes late, someone else enters the canteen. 

“Boss lady,” whispers the woman at Tae’s left, but Tae’s already on her feet. She slams her hands against the table and Kyuubei impassively looks her way; she slams her hands against the table again and says, in a theatrical undertone, “Get over here, new kid.”

“I don’t take orders from you,” says Kyuubei, in a tone so perfectly utterly deathly serious that an appreciative chill runs, quite of its own accord, down the middle of Tae’s back. 

She plants one foot on her bench for maximum theatrical effect; she lifts her chin in threat; she demands, “You wanna say that again?” 

“Yes,” says Kyuubei, and obliges: “I don’t take orders from you.” 

They hold each other’s gaze a moment longer. No sign is needed, no word is needed – they know each other far too well for that; and the instant that Tae pushes back the sleeves of her grey prison-issue pyjamas and vaults across the table is the same instant that Kyuubei spins and kicks out the aluminium leg of the nearest bench, breaking it free to flip it up into action as a makeshift sword. 

It’s an excellent fight, in Tae’s opinion, which is of course the only opinion that matters and which is therefore essentially fact. It’s a fight full of drama and passion and energy, and exciting feints and thrilling counters, and it’s almost a shame when it reaches its theatrical conclusion: a makeshift sword poised above Tae’s heart, a hand closed at Kyuubei’s throat. 

Really, a better stalemate couldn’t be found if Tae had fought the ocean’s tide itself. 

She loosens her grip; Kyuubei lowers the sword; the breath held around the canteen is all let out at once, and Tae lifts her voice above the burst of chatter to command the women at her table. “Move up,” she says, chivvying them aside, “come on, make some space – when an old hand like me meets a youngster with such promise, it’s important to nourish it. What’s your name, kid? No, don’t tell me; we all cast aside who we once were and start afresh in prison. I’ll call you my deputy, and you can call me your boss, and we can plant the seeds of our new lives together like daffodils in springtime. Is that understood, deputy?”

“It’s understood, boss.”

Tae smiles fondly across the table. “Excellent work, deputy,” she says, and takes a scoop of her revolting breakfast. 

The usual clamour swiftly rises up again. Whatever last traces of tension might have been lingering in Tae since she first set foot through the prison’s doors have left her, at last; she feels as happily, contentedly relaxed as though she and Kyuubei have gone for a morning’s onsen trip, and the broiling panic of terror and adrenalin and excitement freshly surging all around them may as well be its soothing, warming waters. 

Unbreakable friendship, unshakeable power, the confidence that in the outside world she’s the first thing on everybody’s minds: not even the dark reality of prison can quench the joy of life’s simplest pleasures. 

 

+++

 

A visitor arrives for her during that morning’s rec yard hours. The spirited gladiatorial tournament over which Tae is presiding when a guard arrives to inform her of this is briefly halted while she passes her umpire’s duties officiously on to Kyuubei, and the noise of heated battle erupts again behind her as she turns to leave. Thoroughly contented, she goes back inside the cool stone halls; and thoroughly contented she remains, right up until she steps inside the visitors’ room. 

“Are unsupervised animals really allowed in here alone?” Tae enquires of a nearby guard, in hushed concern. “Shouldn’t he have a keeper with him, or at least someone to sweep his poop into a little bag in case he’s not quite litter-trained yet?”

“Oh, you’ve got nothing to worry about there,” Kondou assures her confidently, from the other side of the thick plastic divide between them. “Believe it or not, Otae-san, when I was two years old, my own father said he’d never seen an infant with bowel control like mine! Well, that’s that fiery Kondou blood for you; that’s just the kind of talent and ability you always find in children born of the Kondou line. Something to think about, eh?” 

“Absolutely not,” says Tae. 

“Absolutely not yet,” agrees Kondou at once, “absolutely not yet, of course. All sorts of things to think about first. Marriage, for starters, and you can’t forget that before you can have babies you have to make babies – though you’ve nothing to worry about on that count, Otae-san; our barracks doctor assures me I’m firing nothing but the highest quality Shinsengumi-grade ammunition—”

“Kondou-san,” says Tae. Her voice is a warning as sweet as a gun against his temple. 

“— _not_ that that matters,” says Kondou at once, changing tack in a heartbeat, “since the only reason I’m here is to update you personally on your case, Otae-san. And to let you know what’s been going on, and what the Shinsengumi’s doing for you, and what we’re expecting will happen next; and as well as that I wanted to see for myself that your strength and beauty still shines out like a floodlight that bathes this nest of criminal activity in its blinding light. Which I’ve now confirmed,” says Kondou briskly, and ticks an item from the page of notes before him. 

“I see,” says Tae, and gives a melancholy sigh. She folds her hands on the counter between them, steel cuffs clanking with the movement. “Then if you have something to say, and you’re not just here to harass an innocent victim of your own miscarried justice, I suppose I’ll hear you out.”

“I appreciate it, Otae-san—” 

“Although,” Tae continues, more melancholy still, “I don’t suppose I really have a choice in the matter, do I? Not as a prisoner, denied my freedom and my rights, with my liberty so unjustly torn from me...” 

And she allows her eyes to flutter sorrowfully closed, which shows off her eyelashes to their remarkable best advantage and which also causes Kondou to flinch as though she’s wounded him physically rather than emotionally: a double bonus. 

He clenches a fist in passion and leans in towards her. “Otae-san, we’re working our absolute hardest on this case! We’re giving it everything we’ve got – I want you to know that. And I want you to know we won’t rest until it’s over, either.” Kondou gives his page of notes a wretched look, and then he looks up and gives Tae the wretched look as well. There are heavy shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes. If he’s remembered to shave at all in the last two days, there’s no evidence of it in the bristling bluish colour of his jaw. “Personally,” he adds, more wretchedly exhausted still, “I _can’t_ rest until it’s over.” 

“Good,” says Tae firmly. “Justice never sleeps, Kondou-san, and I doubt justice ever takes nap breaks, either. Justice makes do with coffee and the strength of its convictions, and when it starts to feel its eyelids growing heavy it takes an ice bath to snap it back into alertness so it can keep on working through the night.”

Kondou heaves a sigh almost as tragic as her own. “Well, then I’ll tell you where we’re at, Otae-san. Best case scenario, the Amagaeru’d have agreed to let the whole thing go and you’d already be out of here. And worst case scenario, they’d have gone straight to the Shogun for your head – but we’ve held a few meetings with them since you were – since we, ah – since... _you know what_ happened, and—”

“Am I free to go?” inquires Tae. 

“—we’ve got old Matsudaira involved, briefed all levels of the Bakufu on the case as far up as they need to be briefed – haven’t taken it as far as the Shogun, but everything’s in place so if we need to then we can, and we’re ready to go there if we have to—”

Tae raps her knuckles politely against the plastic divide between them. “Kondou-san,” she says again, and waits for him to look up. “I appreciate your hard work, Kondou-san. I really do, and I’m sure you’re doing your very best, and if you’re not then I’m sure Shin-chan and the others will see to it that you face the consequences you deserve. But am I free to go?” 

“Well – not yet, Otae-san, but—”

Tae pushes back her chair and stands. “Guards!” she calls, with a flick of her cuffed hands as merry as though she’s summoning another bottle in the club. “We’re done here, thank you!” 

“Otae-san! _Otae-san_!” Kondou’s on his feet too, one hairy hand splayed frantically against the divide. “It won’t be long, I promise! And I swear we’re doing everything we can!”

“Oh, Kondou-san,” says Tae, in a voice of tragic sympathy. “Unless you’re here to tell me that I’m free, then I don’t want to hear it. Just do your job – and I don’t care what you do, or how you do it, or what happens to anyone who stands in the way of you doing it – just do your job, and get me free. And once you’ve done it, and you’re here to tell me that you’ve done it, then I’ll be glad to see you again.”

Kondou stops in his tracks. “You will?” he says. 

“I will,” confirms Tae, and presses a hand modestly against her heart. “I... do hope I see you soon, Kondou-san.” 

In an instant his exhaustion falls away from him. Alight with fierce determination, revitalised by passion, he cries after her, “You will, Otae-san! I promise you will! As soon as you can dream it! Sooner! You’ll see me before you know it! You’ll—” 

She waves fondly until the door slams closed behind her. It’s no good to have a police chief half-dazed by tiredness leading up her case; anything she can do to rejuvenate his spirit, she’ll do it: for his sake and for hers. 

Back in her cell, her neighbour passes on a letter that, once unfolded, reveals itself as a crushingly humble request for her autograph. Tae refolds the letter as a paper plane and sends it swooping out between her bars, across the hall, and soaring down into the opposite cell to land on its nose near Kyuubei’s mat – where, industriously and contentedly, Kyuubei has been forging every autograph request that comes Tae’s way. 

After a moment’s thought, Tae takes another scrap of paper and a pencil, and writes a message of her own: _Any updates on the Baagen-Dash situation, deputy?_  
  
The message swoops across the hall. Before long, it swoops back. Printed in Kyuubei’s meticulous, old-fashioned script, it reads: _Rumour tells of a source in the men’s wing. Rumour also tells of a guard willing to bridge this unbridgeable divide in exchange for a fee. We can investigate, boss._  
  
Tae flips a secretive thumbs-up across the hall and receives an equally secretive thumbs-up in return; and with both of them in secretive agreement, she tucks Kyuubei’s message into her pyjama shirt pocket, and in the peaceful seclusion of her cell she turns her thoughts to exactly which strings she ought to pull this afternoon to set this plan in motion. 

The Shinsengumi, the Yorozuya, the possibility of intergalactic diplomatic crisis lurking not all that far off on the horizon: already it’s all fading, insignificant, into the background. Into the foreground is rising the distinct possibility of ice cream: chocolate and chocolate with chocolate, perhaps, or maybe chocolate and chocolate and chocolate with chocolate, depending on what’s available...

It’s important for a woman to manage her priorities, after all. And whatever inaccurate criticisms one of Tae’s many bitterly jealous enemies might see fit to level at her – after engaging in several hours of focused creative brainstorming beforehand, naturally, in order to invent a flaw in her which might be even slightly worthy of that criticism – and however hatefully envious of her they might be, still no one could ever say that she’s anything other than practical, and logical, and thoroughly sensible, and down-to-earth by nature while also blessed with a sharp imagination and quick wit, as well as a striking natural beauty and excellent singing voice— 

More than that, though: no one could ever say she’s not a gifted natural at prioritising.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

“Think of me like the sun, girls,” says Tae, her voice raised above the pleading crowds as she benevolently selects her lunchtime table. “There’s plenty of me to go around, but I can’t shine everywhere at once, now, can I? Perhaps in the morning I’ll shine on the front garden so your flowers look their very best, and in the afternoon I’ll shine warmly in through the entrance of the dojo, and by the late afternoon I’ll shine at just the right angle for you to write your letters at your bedroom window without turning on the lights, and by the evening I’ll shine across the other side of the world. Come on, now – move up, move up,” she says, chivvying away the current occupants of her chosen table, “I expect you to treat my deputy with the same respect you’d treat your boss herself, and you’d never ask _me_ to eat in such cramped quarters, would you?”

“ _Never_ , boss lady—” 

“Course we wouldn’t, boss lady—”

“Not in a million years, boss lady, you know we wouldn’t—”

Space is hurriedly made for Tae, and space is hurriedly made for Kyuubei, and the newly displaced occupants of their chosen table drift hurriedly off into the swarm of the cafeteria like irrelevant, unwanted, unnecessary seed pods cast loose by wind. 

Today’s lunch is brown, mostly. It doesn’t serve to think too hard about the specifics. “You know, everyone’s making an awful fuss about this,” Tae remarks. “Shin-chan, and Kagura-chan and Gin-san, and the Shinsengumi too... But I really don’t see the issue. It’s hardly any different from a holiday, once you think about it, isn’t it? Like an all-expenses-paid holiday. No work, no grocery shopping, none of Shin-chan’s laundry to worry about...”

Without looking up, Kyuubei holds out a hand. Into it is carefully placed the offering of the round-faced woman loitering nervously near Tae’s side: a chipped red hairclip, decorated with a smiling yellow flower carved from wood. Kyuubei accepts it, inspects it, and passes it to Tae. Tae accepts it, inspects it, and clips it to the front pocket of her grey pyjama top: approval. 

The woman’s exhale of relief is audible, even as she slinks back into the clamour of the cafeteria. 

Tae prods thoughtfully at her lunch. “You know,” she says at last, in a tone so confidential it’s very nearly sub-audible, “I’m quite certain any woman here would sooner crap her ugly uniform in fear than dare stand up to me, and so it really shouldn’t bother me at all... But still, I can’t help worrying what they’re getting up to whenever I’m not there. Do you think that’s silly of me, Kyuu-chan?” 

A folded letter is being furtively brandished across the table. Kyuubei accepts it, inspects it – crumples it, and tosses it aside. Whatever it was, Tae doesn’t ask: if Kyuubei deemed it unworthy of her time, then she trusts that verdict utterly. “Not at all, Tae-chan. An emperor who remains within his palace is unlikely to hear of the revolution until it has his head.”

“That’s it!” says Tae, in hushed enthusiasm, “that’s _just_ it, Kyuu-chan! And I keep telling myself: with two of us now, it shouldn’t even be a problem – as you can tell me what’s going on anyway, can’t you? You can tell me exactly what the atmosphere is like among them, when I’m in the kitchens and you’re over in the sewing rooms—” 

“I’m not,” says Kyuubei. 

“You’re not?” says Tae. 

“As a celebrity prisoner, I have the right to turn down work duties in exchange for political favours,” explains Kyuubei, and accepts yet another folded letter from yet another loitering hopeful. After a moment’s silent evaluation: “That’s not how you write ‘exquisite’,” says Kyuubei. The verdict is quietly damning. The letter is handed back. “Sewing is women’s work, Tae-chan. I’m not interested in that.”

It’s a puzzled moment before Tae recognises the misunderstanding. “Oh – but Kyuu-chan, _you’d_ never have to sew! Just as I never have to do my own laundry, or rinse my own toothbrush, or wait for my own toilet seat to warm up in the mornings. Just tell any woman there to do yours for you, and she will; and if she doesn’t, then tell her you’ll tell me, and then she certainly will. That’s what it means,” she adds, her voice lowering to a confidential whisper once again, “to be boss and deputy – we don’t have to do a thing, except perhaps pace around a little, and cast occasional threatening looks in random directions, and look as though we’re always on the brink of violence.” 

“I see,” says Kyuubei, deep in thought – and accepts a small slice of shrinkwrapped home-made cake, and sniffs it, and passes it on to the woman volunteering as Tae’s poison tester for the morning – and eventually, sombrely, continues: “Yes, I see. I understand, Tae-chan. Even in the nicest holiday destinations, someone has to stop the hotel guests fighting over the sun-loungers when the hotel manager isn’t there, don’t they?”

“They do,” says Tae gratefully, “they really do. Then you’ll keep them in line for me, Kyuu-chan?” 

“I’ll tolerate no insubordination, Tae-chan.” 

Someone slides an extra sugar packet onto Tae’s lunch tray. She slides it onto Kyuubei’s. In return she gets a private, secretive smile, and she passes that back as well. Since Kyuubei’s arrival, prison life has become something not just to be endured, but to be enjoyed; with a friend, an ally, and a spare pair of hands, prison life has revealed itself as a kaleidoscope of attractive possibilities. 

It’s not just about what admirable personal virtues Tae can give to the prison; it’s about what the prison can give to her. And sometimes, when the prison is unforthcoming, it’s about how she can ball her fists and take it from the prison anyway. 

 

+++

 

“It’s like shounen manga,” says Gintoki, whose silvery hair is singed to an ashy, smouldering grey at the tips, “in that it’ll all be fine in the end, probably, but who knows when the end will actually happen? Two hundred, maybe three hundred chapters more, and throw a spin-off or two in there as well... Maa, and even though they told us the original villain was the worst villain in all of time and space, now there’s a worse villain. And even though the protagonist’s original goal was only to keep an innocent woman out of prison, now the Joui have seized onto that innocent woman’s plight as an excuse to launch their biggest recruiting drive of the last few years, and the selfless noble good-hearted protagonist has had it up to _here_ ,” he slams his hand passionately onto the counter between them, “with idiot wig-heads taking over the protagonist’s own goddamn _office_ as a base of idiot leaflet-printing operations—”

“And Sadaharu’s grown extra toes on his paws,” announces Kagura, whose hands are stained black with printing ink and whose cheek is smeared black with it as well, “because of all the lasers those green gorillas keep shooting round the city, uh-huh. And _I_ haven’t grown anything extra yet but I hope I do, so I can make footprints in the mud and take photos and become the famous Bigfoot and do breakfast talkshows about being Bigfoot, where I wrestle mountain lions and then I eat the mountain lions and everyone calls me The Mighty Bigfoot, and on my dressing room door it says The Mighty Bigfoot and then we become Yorozuya Mighty Bigfoot-chan—” 

“And the Amagaeru are still causing trouble for the Shinsengumi,” says Shinpachi, who’s wearing the faded, colourful traces of lime-green face paint, with lime-green dye streaked through his dark hair as well, “so Kondou-san’s having a lot of problems, Hijikata-san says, with making sure they’ve got enough men for patrols each day as well as defending the headquarters, since the Amagaeru are still fighting to be allowed to supervise every squad that goes out—”

“And the Young Master’s beauty isn’t diminished in the slightest by rough prison clothing or unflattering prison lighting,” says Tojo, at the next visiting booth along, “and in fact if anything I’d say it’s accentuated, like a mournful yet exquisite lone blossom flourishing on a dying tree or a delectable cherry-capped cupcake placed invitingly atop a reeking heap of monkey poop—”

“I didn’t give permission for this man to visit,” Kyuubei tells the nearest guard. “Take him away. Get rid of him. Dispose of him.” 

“And so you see how it is, Otae-san,” concludes Gintoki, and shakes his head wearily. “Tomorrow the Shinsengumi gorilla is sitting down for a meeting with that Amanto gorilla you punched; hopefully they’ll bond about excessive body hair and being punched by you, and agree to disagree, and settle their differences and spend the rest of the meeting braiding each other’s fur and it’ll all be over, just like that – but this morning there was a bomb scare in the business district and Zura says it wasn’t him who set it, so really, who knows?” He turns up his hands in a weary shrug. 

“We’re doing all we can out here,” says Shinpachi. “But until the worst of it blows over, there’s nothing you can do but sit tight and wait for it to end. I’m sorry, ane-ue.”

“That’s all right, Shin-chan,” says Tae kindly. She scoots her chair aside on the stone floor to make space for Kyuubei, who joins her at the Yorozuya’s visiting booth. “You and Kagura-chan are doing your best, and that’s enough. And Gin-san – one _very_ small point,” she says pleasantly, and Gintoki looks sharply, warily up at her. “I couldn’t help noticing you described yourself as the protagonist here.” 

“What?” says Gintoki. 

“It seems to me like I’m the source of all the drama,” explains Tae, “and the heart of all the drama, and the keystone of the drama; so really, Gin-san, it seems to me like _I’m_ the protagonist for the time being.”

“No,” says Gintoki. He shakes his head hard, just once. It looks more like he’s trying to dislodge her words from his ears than anything else. “No, no – no, that’s not how it works. No, no. The protagonist leads the plot, and you can’t lead a plot in prison, Otae-san.”

“ _You_ did, Gin-chan,” objects Kagura. 

“More than once, Gin-san!” says Shinpachi. 

“Well,” says Gintoki, “ _yes_ – but it’s a completely different situation, you see. Because I’m the protagonist.”

“You can only lead a plot in prison if you’re a protagonist,” says Kyuubei, “but you can only be a protagonist by leading a plot. Does that make sense to you, Tae-chan?”

“Not at all, Kyuu-chan.”

“This is _Gintama_ ,” says Gintoki, growing increasingly strident, “as in _Gin_ tama! As in _Gin_ toki! As in Sakata _Gin_ toki is the protagonist of _Gin_ tama—”

“When was the last time _you_ heard the opening credits roll, Kagura-chan?” Tae asks, in a furtive undertone. “I thought I just hadn’t been able to hear them from in here, but perhaps...?”

“Not for days, boss lady,” says Kagura, equally furtive. 

Gintoki jabs a finger into the counter several times. He’s agitated enough that he’s sitting bolt upright, not a trace of a slouch to be seen. “Thinking that being a protagonist is all about being the source of drama is like thinking that an idol is as beautiful every hour of the day as she is under two inches of make-up and hours of styling in the single photo-edited image that the magazine chooses to print out of all the hundreds of images taken in her two-hour photoshoot! It’s not true! And it’s naïve! And—”

“Well, it’s interesting you should mention that, Gin-san, actually—”

Gintoki claps his hand across Shinpachi’s mouth and continues without a pause. “—and you only think that because of how hard I’ve worked behind the scenes! It’s a lot of work, Otae-san! The protagonist is an iceberg, in that you see only my cool collected surface and not the hours upon hours I spend slaving away at promotional appearances, or crafting product endorsements that sound just genuine enough, or perfecting my expression of enigmatically badass cool, or—”

“That _does_ sound like a lot of work,” says Tae sympathetically. “It must be very hard for you, Gin-san. Perhaps it’s a sign that being the protagonist doesn’t come naturally to you? Perhaps it’s a sign that the baton should be passed to the next generation. Perhaps it’s time for the next iceberg to inherit.”

Gintoki manages to restrain himself from leaping to his feet, but it seems a close thing. “Just this morning, I gave an inspirational speech about believing in your friends while I was dodging a volley of laser beams in the middle of a five-on-one fight! And _that’s_ what makes me the protagonist, Otae-san! That’s my bread and butter! That’s how I earn my title!”

“It wasn’t _that_ inspirational, Gin-san,” says Shinpachi, apologetically. 

“Six out of ten, at best,” agrees Kagura, whose interest seems mostly focused on her little finger where it’s rooted deep inside her nose. 

“Six, really? That’s interesting – I’d have said at least a seven, myself; but I suppose I always do mark a bit too generously,” says Shinpachi, with a self-deprecating little laugh. “What about the fact it took place during an action scene, Kagura-chan? Did you mark it up for that?”

Kagura nods, preoccupied by careful extraction of her bounty; she inspects it for a moment, then flicks it carelessly aside. “But then I marked it down again for the topic,” she announces. “The genre’s in a rut, Pachi, if you ask me, all because of main characters like Gin-chan giving speeches about the power of friendship every time they get too lazy to think of something new.”

“She’s got a point,” Shinpachi says fairly. 

“We need something _fresh_ ,” says Kagura, and slams her fist into her palm. “Something _exciting_. Gin-chan should give a speech about the power of egg-over-rice every now and then, or the power of making someone give up information by roasting them over a slow fire, uh-huh – now, _that’d_ be a seven. Maybe an eight, even.”

“Kagura-chan,” says Gintoki, with a brittle-looking smile that shows rather more teeth than usual. “Shinpachi-kun. Oi, oi, you’re really not helping me here, do you know that? Do you realise that?”

“The Young Master is the only _rightful_ protagonist,” says Tojo conversationally, leaning in from his solitary visiting booth, “if such matters are determined the way they should be, by the most important measures of worth, which is to say by historical pedigree and present-day wealth and nobility of birth—” 

“Kagura-chan,” says Kyuubei. 

“Got it,” says Kagura, and punches him all the way into the wall. 

“If I lose my place as protagonist,” says Gintoki, pursuing his point with rather desperate focus, “then what becomes of you two, huh? You’d be out of work in a heartbeat, have you forgotten about that?”

“I don’t think I would, actually,” says Shinpachi thoughtfully. “I mean, I’d probably still be quite a major character, given that ane-ue’s my sister.” 

“And I’d still be the sidekick,” says Kagura, “but I’d just be boss lady’s sidekick now instead, and we could have a later airing time so everyone knew the violence rating had gone up. And Sadaharu would still be the super-cute mascot. And you’d probably be another Madao, Gin-chan. You’d have to fight him for screen time. You could have brawls in the street and I could charge people to watch, and they’d throw coins at you and call you Permadao. _Perm_ -Madao, like your hair, and _perma_ -dao, like you’d be Madao forever and ever—”

“Did you say Kondou-san is meeting the ambassador tomorrow?” Tae asks Gintoki. 

Gintoki stops scrubbing his knuckles into the top of Kagura’s head and looks at her. It’s a bland look, his usual dead-mackerel-half-filleted-on-the-ice-slab look, but the single solitary resemblance he bears to an iceberg is that so very little of what he’s thinking is available on the surface. “Yeah, he’s spending the afternoon getting coached for it by Little Lord Mayonnaise. Learning when and when not to whip his dick out, that sort of thing.”

“Then you can tell him I wish him luck,” says Tae firmly. “That should give him some motivation, and if it doesn’t give him enough then tell him I’m wasting pitifully away in here. And if he screws up the meeting, then tell him I’m dead, and it’s his fault, and he’s not invited to the funeral. But I do trust Kondou-san, and I’m sure he’ll do his best,” she adds, and she bats her eyelashes down and smiles prettily, and adds again, “and tell him I said that, word for word, and tell him that I batted my eyelashes down and smiled prettily as well.” 

“Will do,” says Gintoki, and flips her a thumbs up. “You’ve got my Yorozuya Promise, Otae-san.”

“There’s no such thing as a Yorozuya Promise,” says Shinpachi, “but we will do, ane-ue.”

“I also have a question,” says Kyuubei, and hesitates. “About... the original issue. The most serious issue. I want to know...”

“Kyuu-chan?” prompts Kagura. 

“Could I play... a samurai, Kagura-chan? From the future? In the new series? Could I be a samurai from the future?”

“Kyuubei-kun! There _is_ no new series!” 

“An old classic with a modern twist,” says Kagura, and taps her ink-stained fingers pensively against her chin. “I like it, uh-huh! No problem, Kyuu-chan. You could be a robot too, if you like.”

“I’d rather be a human, Kagura-chan. Robots don’t have the flexibility a samurai needs.”

“There _is_ no new series! Kyuubei-kun, Kagura-chan, there _is_ no new series! _I’m_ the protagonist, this is _my_ series—”

Shrilling buzzers erupt into noise on both sides of the plastic divide: the end of the visiting hour. Quickly, before the guards descend, Tae presses her hand against the divide and Shinpachi does the same, one brief moment of farewell that’s not a hug but that’s as close as they can get. In the next booth along, Tojo presses his hand optimistically against the divide as well, but Kyuubei waves goodbye to Kagura and leaves without looking back. 

 

+++

 

One week moves smoothly into the next. By Tae’s second Friday in prison, her days have already settled into a peaceful routine. She whiles away her work time in the kitchens, cooking whatever she wants, as over in the sewing room her will is carried out from afar by Kyuubei, her trusty second-in-command. Her free time she whiles away once reunited with her trusty second-in-command, either outside in the sunshine of the rec yard or indoors in the comfort of the rec room’s best sofa. If there’s a visit, she greets her visitors. If there’s a sense of mutiny in the ranks, she crushes the mutiny. If there’s a whiff of blood in the water, she doesn’t rest until there’s at least twice as much blood in the water as water. And meanwhile, breakfast, lunch, and dinner continue to be heartwarming communal events, during which she’s able to relax, and socialise, and accept the offerings, supplications, and deserved gratitude of her loyal subjects. 

One afternoon, while strolling the rec yard, she shades her eyes and peers up into the sky, and points out to Kyuubei the colourful smoking contrails of several glittering, beetle-bright Amanto saucers spinning feverishly fast among the clouds. Another afternoon the rec yard itself is choked with smoke, ashy and grey with a smell like washing-up liquid. Sometimes the sound of distant music can be heard, but it’s no music known to Earth: its tone is harsh and high, and the clusters of notes that shudder through it seem impossible and scraping. 

Rumour has it that one grey morning in the prison’s west wing a wild green light bursts suddenly through the high bars of a dusty, unused window, and skitters and refracts across the floor and walls and cells for a brief few moments before it’s gone again: the blinding light of Amanto laser cannons. Not hunting, though, but searching, and searching, and searching. 

The same rumour also has it that the women who this light touched have since sprouted several extra fingers on each hand, and several extra toes on each foot; but the women of the prison’s west wing are largely under life imprisonment, which tends to make for very dull, self-absorbed conversation about nothing except being under life imprisonment, and so Tae doesn’t bother seeking any of them out to confirm it for herself. 

There’s something going on in the city: that much is obvious. But Tae has been forcibly removed from the city by the Shinsengumi’s brute injustice; she’s a convict without a conviction, and she’s got far more pressing matters to worry about. 

 

+++

 

“We’re considering opening a zoo,” says Tae. 

Shinpachi’s smile fixes into place for a moment, then wilts – then bursts back to life with twice as much manic, desperate enthusiasm as before. “To keep everyone’s spirits up?” He clenches his fists, bubbling over with encouragement. “That’s great, ane-ue! That’s just the kind of generous action I’d expect from my big sister!” 

“Oh, it’s nothing special,” says Tae modestly. “And so far it’s only what we’ve been able to source from inside the prison, of course – lizards, beetles, a few rats—”

“But still, it’s better than nothing!” Shinpachi says enthusiastically. “And I bet everyone’s glad for it anyway, aren’t they? I bet everyone’s glad to have something new to talk about!”

“—a few stray dogs,” continues Tae, “a tiger with a cub or two or three, someone’s lost pet rabbit—”

“—several varieties of monkey,” adds Kyuubei, “golden and howler and flying, and one antelope—”

“—a box of cockroaches, a couple of penguins—”

“ _Ane-ue_! What do you mean, you sourced this all from inside prison? What kind of zoo is this? What kind of _prison_ is this?” 

“Only one penguin now,” Kyuubei tells Tae, in a private undertone, “as the first was trampled by the hippopotamus and the second was incinerated by one of the lizards—” 

“And what kind of lizards are you keeping?” demands Shinpachi, and slams his hands against the counter. “Kyuubei-san! What kind of lizards incinerate penguins, Kyuubei-san?” 

“Oh, isn’t that a pity?” says Tae, struck by genuine sorrow. “I knew we never should have let those useless east-wing girls look after them, Kyuu-chan. We’ll have to take back the red pandas as well, now we know they can’t be trusted.”

Kyuubei nods in sombre agreement. “Then we’ll have to rehome the meerkats, too, as their behaviour towards the red pandas has proven continually spiteful and provocative. So perhaps if we move the parrots’ enclosure, first of all—” 

“Are they dragons?” persists Shinpachi, red in the face and ever more strident. “Do you mean the lizards are dragons, Kyuubei-san? You’ve got dragons in your zoo? Is that it? Ane-ue? How are you getting _dragons_ for your zoo?”

Kagura plants her palm flat against Shinpachi’s face to shove him further from her ear. “Boss lady’s got more womanly wiles than anyone in Edo,” she says, with lofty scorn, “so she activated her womanly wiles and then radars went pinging out all over the prison and told her where the animals were hiding, uh-huh. And then she hunted them down with big nets and a stun gun and used more of her womanly wiles to tie them up and drag them back with her.”

“Not exactly what womanly wiles are, Kagura-chan,” says Gintoki, and gives her head an affectionate pat that would most likely render anyone with a less concrete skull unconscious. “I’d say you’ll learn when you get older, but any girl who spends as much time vomiting on national television as you do has already forfeited her chance to find out.”

“That’s what _my_ womanly wiles are,” Kagura says stoutly, and knocks his hand away. “Zoo animals and sukonbu, uh-huh, that’s me. I don’t want any other stupid wiles. Any other stupid wiles can go jump in the river and drown.”

Tae gives her a firm little nod of solidarity. “And in fact, Gin-san, you’ve visited with perfect timing. We’ve been using the bathroom sinks to keep the stingrays in house and home, but that makes it a little difficult to brush your teeth in the mornings, since you can never be quite sure whether you’ll be unconscious and twitching on the floor before you’re done. So what we’d _really_ like is some sort of paddling pool.”

Gintoki looks at her. His expression is very bland. Even when Kagura squirms free from the armlock he’s pinned her in and smacks him around the back of the head, his expression remains very bland. 

“Inflatable or real – either one would be acceptable,” Kyuubei tells him. The very bland look moves to Kyuubei, too. “Just choose whichever you would be able to install most quickly. It’s a matter of some urgency, as the walruses are arriving tomorrow.”

The very bland look moves to Shinpachi – but Shinpachi has dropped his face into his folded arms atop the counter, and seems to be pretending he’s somewhere else entirely, muttering ceaselessly and unintelligibly to himself. 

“Well,” says Gintoki, eventually. His voice is very bland as well. “The thing is, Otae-san, Kyuubei-kun – my plate is actually looking sort of... full, at the moment. Sort of very full, what with all these aliens we’ve got shooting lasers all over the place, and all those Joui who keep hatching plots to overthrow the Bakufu within the next two weeks, and how close the city’s coming to collapse. So you can understand that a – that your, ah—”

“Paddling pool?” offers Tae. 

“—right,” says Gintoki, blander still, “for your – ah, for your—” 

“Stingrays,” supplies Kyuubei, “and the walruses, which are arriving tomorrow, as I mentioned—”

“—for those,” says Gintoki, now as bland as tamagoyaki cooked in any other substandard way than Tae’s own special recipe, “for all of that. And so I’m sure you understand, given the circumstances, why all of that can’t be our top priority right now.”

“I don’t understand that at all, Gin-san,” says Tae, in impeccably polite confusion. “Aren’t the Yorozuya supposed to handle any job that comes their way?”

Gintoki’s expressionless attitude is beginning to show the strain. “Shinpachi,” he says. He jams his elbow into Shinpachi’s side and attempts an appeasing smile. “Oi, Shinpachi. You’re neglecting your duties, Shinpachi. Talking sense into your sister is _your_ job, Shinpachi, that’s why I employ you, Shinpachi. Shinpachi. _Shinpachi_ —” 

“If that’s no longer the case, then you should change your promotional material to reflect the Yorozuya’s new policy,” says Kyuubei, in a tone of quiet reproach. “It’s dishonourable to mislead your clients, Gintoki. A samurai must strive for accurate advertising standards.”

Gintoki shoves Shinpachi until he blearily lifts his head. “Shinpachi. _Shinpachi_ —” 

“We’ll get it done by the morning, boss lady. I swear it on Gin-chan’s life,” says Kagura, and presses her fingertips earnestly against the divide between them. 

“I knew I could rely on you,” says Tae fondly, and touches her own fingertips to Kagura’s. It’s an automatic response by now, an unthinking habit—

Something’s different, though. Tae takes her hand away and replaces it – but still, something doesn’t seem quite right. “Ah... Kagura-chan, have you always had that many fingers?”

Kagura looks at her own hand. Six fingers and a thumb are splayed against the glass. 

“The lasers! You let their lasers get you, didn’t you, you idiot?” Shinpachi bolts to his feet, but he’s cut off mid-cry by Kagura balling her brand-new fist and socking him experimentally in the stomach; he doubles up so hard that his glasses clatter to the floor, and Kagura’s joyful, caterwauling whoops of triumph echo through the prison long after the visiting hour is over. 

 

+++

 

A plastic inflatable paddling pool crammed inside a battered storage box is lying on its side outside Tae’s cell the next morning. She pulls it in through the bars, and shakes it out, and inspects it: printed with cheerful little fish, a few patched-over holes, but perfectly serviceable. For all Gintoki’s protestations, Tae has never once regretted placing her trust in the Yorozuya. 

The zoo is a resounding success, until the raid from Edo’s intergalactic branch of Customs & Exports confiscates most of its inhabitants and removes several of the more obliging guards from their posts and transfers them, instead, into cells of their own. But after the zoo there’s the talent show, and then there’s the incident with the home-grown casino, and after that there’s a cookery class to establish – and during all of it there’s the discovery to be made that cigarettes are really only the half of it, when it comes to smuggling, and where the money _really_ is in a filthy hellhole like this one is scented shampoo: the prison halls begin to smell of florals and coconut and honey, clouds of luxurious scent wafting every which way for a few blissful days until the next Customs  & Exports raid. Despite this, Tae and Kyuubei’s profits remain untouched – safely tucked inside the sarashi bindings of a celebrity prisoner with the right to refuse all frisk searches. 

Kagura and Shinpachi visit alone one afternoon, both miserable and exhausted, with news that Gintoki’s expected to make it through the night but it was a close thing, and the range of motion in his left arm is probably going to be limited for at least the next week. Another afternoon it’s Shinpachi alone, soaked through and frothing with outrage, and he spends almost the entire hour complaining at top volume and top speed about Kagura’s idea of subtly concealing their location by leaping off a bridge and dragging him along behind her. All three of them visit together again, along with someone who – behind the lens-free spectacles, luxurious fake moustache, and yellow velour tracksuit – looks remarkably like Katsura Kotarou, and they bring her news of a city-wide curfew that none of them have any intentions of sticking to. One afternoon Shinpachi visits Tae, and Kagura visits Kyuubei, and while Shinpachi energetically explains how much easier he’s beginning to find it to change into his full lime-green Amagaeru disguise, and how much more quickly he’s able to streak his hair with green for undercover work, from the corner of her eye Tae sees Kagura and Kyuubei at the next visiting booth, sitting together in wordless calm, as Kagura spends the whole hour silently screwing her knuckles into Tojo’s skull and ignoring his blubbering wails. 

Peacefully, pleasantly, the days pass by. 

 

+++

 

“We’ve got some news, ane-ue,” says Shinpachi. He’s trying his best not to smile and he’s not succeeding, and Tae is immediately certain of the nature of the news. “I know we haven’t visited for a couple of days, but that’s because we managed to sneak onto their spaceship – though we nearly got caught because Katsura-san wouldn’t stop touching all the extra toes on all the stray cats in the park, and all the stray cats wouldn’t stop yowling and scratching bits of him off – but then it took off, anyway, after we were onboard, and so _that’s_ where we’ve been this week: in space, ane-ue!”

“That doesn’t sound very safe, Shin-chan,” says Tae. “Has Gin-san been endangering you? Should I have a little talk with him?”

“No!” says Shinpachi. “I mean – in the end Gin-san battled their leader and spared his life, ane-ue! And then their leader was so moved by experiencing human mercy first-hand that he decided to change his ways and start practising it too, and Katsura-san – ah, that’s right, I didn’t mention what Katsura-san was doing! But he was with Kagura-chan, actually – because they stayed back together to hold off the Third Royal Division army when Gin-san went on ahead to find the leader. And _I_ was with Kondou-san and Elizabeth-san – Katsura-san said Elizabeth-san had to come with our group, you see, because he didn’t trust Kondou-san without Joui supervision – but anyway,” he says, pink with enthusiasm, and Tae waits fondly, patiently, handcuffed hands folded in her lap, “the three of us, ane-ue, we went looking for the central command station – which was surprisingly easy to find in the end, given how securely the perimeters had been—”

“Boss lady, you’re gonna be an ex-con!” 

Shinpachi skids around in his seat in outrage. “Kagura-chan! That was _my_ news!” 

“I know! I know, I know – and I _tried_ to wait,” cries Kagura in protest, “but it’s not safe to hold it in too long, Pachi, you can damage your bladder and then your kidneys start to rot, and you were talking so much I could _feel_ my kidneys rotting—”

“Gorilla-san says you can expect to be out by the afternoon,” says Gintoki, while the bickering continues to rage behind his head. He looks exhausted; his yukata is stained with dirt and blood, and the grimy, unpeeling end of a bandage is shedding itself from his shoulder, but he’s smiling. “I’m pretty sure he wants to come and turn the key himself, so we might have to—”

The plastic divide is nowhere near as heavy-duty as it looks. Tae brushes shards of splintered plastic from her knuckles and gets to her feet. “Oh, there’s no need for him to take the trouble,” she says politely. 

The sudden explosion has silenced the room. “Ane-ue,” begins Shinpachi, his voice strained – but he trails off. 

She jerks her hands apart, one short sharp motion, and snaps her handcuffs. “Honestly, the state of you, Shin-chan! Of _all_ of you – you all look exhausted. What you need,” she says, all business, as she clambers up onto the counter and through the gaping, jagged hole in the divide to the other side, “is a nice home-cooked meal, isn’t it? Something to get your strength back up. Something warm and nourishing and wholesome. And I know just the thing, so first of all,” as she gives Kagura a boost to climb through into the prison side, “let’s go back and get Kyuu-chan,” as she chivvies an unwilling Shinpachi to follow in Kagura’s path, “and second of all, let’s all go home... Ah – is there a problem, Gin-san?” 

Gintoki heaves a tremendous sigh of resignation. “None at all,” he says, and clambers through into the women’s prison. “I’m sorry,” he tells the guards, as he passes by, and if the guards have anything they want to say about that then they’re either so startled, or so afraid, or so admiring of Tae that whatever it is, it goes thoroughly unsaid. 

 

+++

 

“We’re leaving,” Tae tells Kyuubei, and wrenches open the bars of the cell as easily as though they’re twists of limply undercooked pastry. 

“I see,” says Kyuubei. “Just a moment.” 

From beneath the tatami emerges a full-size sword of polished steel. From beneath the heap of spare sheets at the back of the cell emerges a plain wooden sheath. Kyuubei slides the one inside the other and steps out of the gap between the bars. 

“I didn’t know you had that with you, Kyuu-chan,” says Tae, impressed. “You never used it in a fight, did you?”

“I considered it,” says Kyuubei gravely. “But I wanted to get into the spirit of the thing, Tae-chan.” 

They’re at the exit of the wing by now. The guards raise their sticks a beat too late, bewildered by the sight of the approaching group; but even if they’d raised their sticks exactly on time it’d still be useless. The door is locked, not that it makes a difference. Tae leads the way. 

“Are you allowed to have swords in prison?” Shinpachi wonders aloud. 

“Celebrity prisoners are. I was allowed my own room, too, if I wanted it. With a proper bed. And different food. And heating. But Tae-chan wasn’t,” says Kyuubei, as though this explains everything, which it does. The big terracotta-red main doors of the prison are rising up at the end of the long hall, sweeping up into a high, ominous arch – but those, too, fall open without trouble. 

The broad street outside the prison’s front entrance is pot-holed and smoking. Shinpachi waves towards a particularly vast crater, already starting to recover some of his previous enthusiasm, and begins, “Do you see that, ane-ue? With the scorch marks? Because _that’s_ where—” 

Gently, Tae says, “It’s better not to dwell on the past, Shin-chan.”

“I’m not dwelling on it,” objects Shinpachi, “all I did was mention it, and you didn’t even let me tell you _what_ I was mentioning—” 

More gently still, Tae says, “Let’s just look to the future, Shin-chan.” 

“I _do_ look to the future,” insists Shinpachi, “but I just thought you might like to know a bit more about what’s been happening while you’ve been stuck in prison, that’s all—”

“Don’t let your past haunt you,” advises Kagura. “If your past’s haunting you then you’ve got to exorcise it, uh-huh. Cast out the spectres of your youth, Pachi. Look forward and don’t look back.” 

“I’m _not_ being haunted by my past, Kagura-chan,” says Shinpachi doggedly, “and anyway, it’s your past too – and anyway, it’s barely even the past! You’ve still got fourteen fingers! It’s definitely still the present!”

Unspeakably gently, Tae says, “Let’s just keep moving forward, Shin-chan, always facing bravely towards tomorrow’s light.”

“Poetic words, Tae-chan.” 

“Poetry is simply a matter of speaking the truth that shines inside your soul, Kyuu-chan.” 

“I see,” says Kyuubei, deeply moved. 

“Ane-ue!” yells Shinpachi. “ _Ane-ue_!” he yells again, louder and shriller. “Ane-ue, don’t you even _care_?” he bursts out at last, and he wheels around in the middle of the lurching pot-holed road to stare at the troupe of assorted escapees, his eyes wild behind his glasses. “I just thought you might like to get a better picture of what’s been going on out here, that’s all! I thought I could fill you in on all the A-plot you’ve been missing, stuck in there – I thought I was doing you a favour, ane-ue! But don’t you even _care_?”

Tae says, “It’s very presumptuous to assume you’re the A-plot, Shin-chan.” 

“But that’s exactly what you’ve been doing all this time!” Shinpachi wails. 

In a tone of chiding, big sisterly rebuke she generally reserves for matters like Shinpachi forgetting to hang up his towels after a bath, Tae says, “I said that it’s very presumptuous for _you_ to assume you’re the A-plot, Shin-chan.” 

Shinpachi casts her a look of despair, and tries another approach. “Kyuubei-san—”

“I should contact Tojo,” says Kyuubei, in sudden memory. “He’ll drop the charges against me as soon as I tell him to. But... until such time as I encounter him, I must live my life as a wanted convict on the run.”

“Tojo-san’s right there,” says Shinpachi. “Kyuubei-san, he’s up that tree. I can see his sandals.”

“It won’t be an easy life, and it won’t be a kind life,” Tae says, sincerely heartfelt, “but you’ll always have my support, Kyuu-chan, I promise you – and if ever your rōnin wandering should bring you back through the streets of Edo, there’ll always be a home-made meal for you at the Kodoukan Dojo—”

“I can call him over right now, if you want,” says Shinpachi, but he says it with the gloom of a boy who’s lost all hope. Consolingly, Gintoki reaches out to pat the top rim of his glasses. “Gin-san. Gin-san?”

“Oh, don’t mind me,” says Gintoki, still patting, “I’m just ruffling your hair for comfort, Patsuan, like the wise old mentor figure I know you see me as, even if you’re always just a touch too bashful to say it aloud—” 

“That is not my hair! Gin-san, that is _not my hair_!”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Pachi,” says Kagura supportively, reaching up to pat as well, “there’s still a _little_ hair left, I can feel it right here—”

“That’s my eyebrow!”

“Well, if he won’t listen to his doting old father then you’ll have to tell him for me, Kagura-chan; tell our Shinpachi there’s no shame in balding when you’re young—”

“Oh, but you shouldn’t lie to him, Gin-chan, he’ll grow up coddled and useless—” 

The sound of raucous squabbling gets louder, and then the three of them get so distracted by squabbling that they forget to keep walking too, and so Tae and Kyuubei continue on alone into the busy crowds of the only slightly fire-damaged shopping districts. There’s curious graffiti scrawled in neon green paint across nearly every wall, vast furious messages in no language Tae recognises, but it’s really no concern of hers. 

“We should go by the grocery store,” she says, at thoughtful length. “I’m sure I’ll need to stock up on eggs – they’re the one thing Shin-chan always forgets to bring home for me, no matter how many times I underline it on his shopping list... Oh, I _am_ glad all that nonsense is over,” Tae says suddenly, “it was very kind of the state to sponsor a little getaway for two like that, but I’ve missed having my own oven. Let’s hurry home, shall we?”

“We can take a shortcut,” says Kyuubei, peering up towards a towering landslide of streetside rubble, “since half of Edo City Hall appears to have been demolished in our absence.”

In a city as huge and chaotically wild as Edo, it’s unreasonable to expect that nothing should have changed in that absence. Equally, it’s unnecessary to question why it might have changed. It’s Edo – the city is alive, and of course it’s always changing, and of course she’s got far more important things to worry about. 

“Perfect,” says Tae briskly, and she rolls up the legs of her prison-issue pyjamas and begins to climb the wreckage.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm [over here on tumblr](http://www.uzumakiwonderland.tumblr.com/), where I'm usually just singing the praises of Tae's endless strengths, talents, and inspirational qualities the whole time. Thanks for reading, and any comments would be appreciated! ♥]


End file.
